Netware 5.1 Slow Network 2

[MeterMan]

Hello,

I have one Netware 5.1 SP3 server running in my network. It is really only a file server, it has 512 MB of ram, and with an average of 20 clients connecting to it. The cleint machines range from Win 95 to Win 2000 (with one XP machine). Users are experiencing slow networking.... such as when coping files from a netware directory, or deleting files or moving files etc.... (Specific example, moving a directory containing a number of files with a total size of 150 K, took 5 minutes to move from one novell dir to another novell dir.) We have a 100MB/10MB (depending on clients NIC card) network, therefore it should be really fast, but it is not.

Can anybody help or give suggestions as to how I can try and trouble shoot this??

Thanks,

Andrew "Software developer trying to play Network Guru!"

 

[TheLad]

Check out the following Novell TID. I would advise only actioning the FILESYS.NLM and the SET CLIENT FILE CACHING ENABLED = OFF actions:

http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/10060265.htm

I myself have seen considerable problems without the above SET command configured. Also configure the SET command in STARTUP.NCF -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[dkediger]

Other suggestions:
If you're using Windows Explorer to copy/move these files, the file actually goes from the server to the workstation back to the server. This will be exacerbated if you have a virus scanner active on the workstation - which you do have, don't you? ;-)

Also, if you have file compression enabled on the server, and you're running low on disk space, the files will undoubtedly be compressed as you access them - the server must uncompress them first, pass them to the workstation, and then recompress them to store them again.

 

[gwaielo]

The configuration mentioned by TheLad is probably the one, if the server is in this state you will probably see utilization never drops below 40% (usually it should occasionally drop down to single figures).

We had a similar problem caused by a different issue, if you have a large number of files in one directory (>5000) then the server can have directory caching problems. We ended up using something like:

set maximum directory cache buffers = 30000
set directory cache buffer nonreferenced delay = 1000

One other thing is to be really sure you do note have speed/duplex issues with your network card, if it is connected to a switch try hard setting the speed and duplex on both ends, if it is on a hub make sure you set the server to half duplex.

 

[MeterMan]

Thanks for all the responses.


TheLad: I already have set "client file caching" to off, but this didn't seem to help much.

dkediger: I do have antivirus running on the server and workstations (Panda antivirus). I have had that running for a while now and it worked pretty good in the beggining. (Although I do have about double the users from the beggining.) The disk space was fine, although most of the free space had to be purged from the volume (approx 13Gb) which I did yesterday, so I will see if that helps. Would that matter??

Gwaielo: My server is actually rarley above 40% (unless a backup is running or something like that), usually when I have noticed these slow downs the server is at anywhere from 20% to 35%. Also I have checked the duplex and the server is set to Half duplex along with the hub/switch, and all workstations are set to 'automatic detection'.

Thanks for the help.....

 

[MeterMan]

Another response:

TheLad: I took a look at the current filesys.nlm that I have running, and it is V.5.10 with a date of June 27, 2001. (Which is newer than the one in the document you specified) I also found a new TID (#2960902) for a post SP3 fix. It is also filesys.nlm, with the same version of 5.10, but with a different date. Don't the versions mean anything anymore?? I was going to put on this patch but the TID mentioned "to install this field test version", therefore I was worried about puting a test version of the file sys on my production server! (just some more info!)